John Frederick Smerdon Stone (20 July 1899 – 12 May 1957) was a British archaeologist, most famous for his work in and around
Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...
, especially at
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric Megalith, megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, to ...
and the
Woodhenge
Woodhenge is a Neolithic Class II henge and timber circle monument within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in Wiltshire, England. It is northeast of Stonehenge, in Durrington parish, just north of the town of Amesbury.
Discovery
Woodhen ...
area.
Stone was born in
Bath, Somerset
Bath (Received Pronunciation, RP: , ) is a city in Somerset, England, known for and named after its Roman Baths (Bath), Roman-built baths. At the 2021 census, the population was 94,092. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, Bristol, River A ...
. In 1947, Stone excavated the first ever trench across the Stonehenge
cursus
Cursuses are monumental Neolithic enclosure structures comprising parallel banks with external ditches or trenches. Found only in the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, relics within them indicate that they were built between 3400 and 3000 BC ...
, at a site near the Fargo Plantation a little north west of the stone circle. This permitted its dating for the first time and Stone was able to establish its prehistoric date and that it had been constructed using
antler
Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) Family (biology), family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally fo ...
picks in irregular sections. In the cursus ditch fill, he also found a piece of
Welsh stone, incorrectly described as a fragment from the Cosheston Beds of
Milford Haven
Milford Haven ( ) is a town and community (Wales), community in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is on the north side of the Milford Haven Waterway, an estuary forming a natural harbour that has been used as a port since the Middle Ages.
The town was ...
. Coupled with the finds of
bluestone
Bluestone is a cultural or commercial name for a number of natural dimension stone, dimension or building stone varieties, including:
* basalt in Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, and in New Zealand
* diabase, dolerites in Tasmania, ...
fragments found between the cursus and Stonehenge, Stone hypothesised that an earlier bluestone monument, predating the megalithic stages of Stonehenge, had stood near the cursus and been subsequently moved and re-erected on its current spot.
[ Chippendale, C "Stonehenge Complete" (Thames and Hudson, London, 2004)]
In 1950, Stone joined
R. J. C. Atkinson and
Stuart Piggott
Stuart Ernest Piggott, (28 May 1910 – 23 September 1996) was a British archaeologist, best known for his work on prehistoric Wessex.
Early life
Piggott was born in Petersfield, Hampshire, the son of G. H. O. Piggott, and was educated ...
in an excavation at Stonehenge itself. Commissioned by the
Society of Antiquaries, their work recovered many cremations and developed the phasing that still dominates much of what is written about Stonehenge.
References
Further reading
* Stone, John F.S., 1935. ''Some discoveries at Ratfyn, Amesbury and their bearing on the date of Woodhenge'', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 47, 55-67
* Stone, John F.S., 1936. ''An enclosure on Boscombe Down East'', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 47, 466-489
* Stone, John F.S., 1938. ''An early Bronze Age grave in Fargo Plantation near Stonehenge'', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 48, 357-70
* Stone, John F.S., 1947. ''The Stonehenge Cursus and its affinities'', Archaeological Journal, 104, 7-19
* Stone, John F.S., & Young, W.E.V., 1948. ''Two pits of grooved ware date near Woodhenge'', Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 52, 287-306
* Stone, John F.S., 1949. ''Some grooved ware pottery from the Woodhenge area'', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 15, 122-27
* Stone, John F.S., 1958. ''Wessex Before the Celts'', Frederick A Praeger Publishers, New York, 1958, Library of Congress Card # 58-8184
1899 births
1957 deaths
Archaeologists of Stonehenge
People from Bath, Somerset
20th-century British archaeologists
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